From EI 2.9 to 6.5 quality experiment

#1

Hello all,

So how far has EI image quality come since 2.9?
I decided to do a little spare time experiment. Click on the below link and you’ll see a render of the award winning Waulk Mill building done in 2.9, below it there is a render of the same model done in 6.5 with GI (although it isn’t strictly a fair test). Anyway, it’s interesting.

Besides the renders there is a real photo of the building with some timber panelling details that were added later and hence are missing from the original model.

I’ve run out of time to tweak the 6.5 version so I’ll call it a WIP as an excuse for it not being perfect ;o)

Just a workflow note: I opened the 2.9 file in version 4 (thanks to Phil at EI for that) and saved it, then opened in 6.5. This got around the texturing errors you get if you just leap from 2.9 to 6.5.

http://homepage.mac.com/cake_or_death/waulk-mill-wip.jpg
344k (Its rather huge).

Ian

#2

Hmm… I guess they are such different scenes that it IS kind of hard to compare…

But, I actually kind of like the v2.9 one better. The GI probably makes the second one more realistic, but I also think that often GI tends to strip the ‘character’ out of scenes… they tend to look kind of overblown and bland to me at times.

Maybe I just like things a bit more stylized than ‘real’ for this kind of thing… don’t know. (and after I’ve spend so many years trying to go for photo-realistic… lol).

Anyway, both are great. I suppose if they were both the same shot, that could change my opinion too.

That said… I still want v6.5!

-Steve

#3

It’s the colour casts that change the mood :slight_smile:

The original has a very blue colour cast, and the new one has a very yellow colour cast.

Unfortunately I couldn’t do the same shot because I wanted a true 3d shot and the original image is a 2pp (no converging vertices).

Anyway, that’s why I put it up, because I couldn’t make up my mind which I liked more. It’s that ‘sometimes true, sometimes not true’ rule about artists and not tools again.
I showed it to the original client as well as the chap that did the first image, both prefer the new one… Depends what you’re after I suppose :wink:

Ian

#4

EI 6.5 can do 3 point, 2 point and 1 point perspectives with the rise and fall feature under FOV for the camera settings. Do you mean you “couldn’t” or “didn’t” want to? Maybe as part of it being a WIP you could re-render it from the original 2pp. I’d like to see how the deep shadow areas of the original compare to the new rendering. The challenging thing I find with architectural renderings is getting light to bounce into those hiden parts of the model to light them successfully.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Buggsy

#5

Yeap, I meant couldn’t and wouldn’t because I wanted 3pp not 2pp :slight_smile:

I’ll do an overnight of the original shot with GI for you.
Ian

#6

Interesting project…I agree with buggsy. I’d love to see a duplicate rendering from the original perspective.

So far, I’ve avoided re-rendering old projects in 6.5. I suspect that once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop–it’s just amazing to me how much GI can add to a scene.

#7

Well it makes them look real for a start :wink:

I’ve done 5 old projects now (GI’d them). It was well worth it in my opinion, of course, our clients want to see photoreal renders, and the portfolio needed them, so going back and re-rendering was almost a requirement :slight_smile:
Ian

#8

I didn’t read the first post initially and looked at the photo. The Upper left image said “CG Architectural Visualization” to me. The other two said “CG” because that’s what the thread was about. Didn’t realize until after reading the post that one of the two was the real thing.

#9

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